Cuphead
Studio MDHR · Shooter, Indie, Action
Overview
Cuphead is a run-and-gun action game focused primarily on boss battles. Its visual style is modeled after 1930s cartoons, using traditional hand-drawn cel animation, watercolor backgrounds, and original jazz recordings. Players control Cuphead or Mugman in single-player or local co-op, traversing themed worlds, acquiring new weapons, and unlocking super moves. The game includes both boss encounters and side-scrolling platforming stages.
THE GAMEQ VERDICT9,966 reviews analyzed
What players are actually saying
1. Summary
Players treat Cuphead as a modern classic. The hand-drawn 1930s cartoon look and the live jazz soundtrack get a lot of praise, but the reviews spend just as much time on the boss fights: a long run of short encounters that feel impossible at first and become beatable as you learn them. Difficulty comes up in 59% of the longer reviews, and dozens of them call it hard but fair. Finally beating a boss is what players say keeps them replaying it on Expert, chasing S ranks and buying the Delicious Last Course expansion, which gets plenty of praise of its own.
The six run-and-gun stages are the part of the main game players like least. PC players who try keyboard and mouse run into fixed keys, no mouse shooting and a hold-to-fire button, and people who want to play with a friend over the internet find only local co-op and laggy Remote Play. A smaller group argues that some fights lean on luck, cluttered screens and finicky parries more than skill. About a quarter of the longer negative reviews still bring up the art, usually to praise it before saying the game was too hard for them.
2. What keeps coming up
What players praise
The hand-drawn 1930s art and animationHigh
46% of the longer reviews bring up the visuals. Players compare it to a lost Fleischer or early Disney short, and many point out that every frame was drawn by hand, with watercolor backgrounds and a film-grain overlay. One player wrote that "the handdrawn animation is such a refreshing thing in the vast sea of 3D rendering everywhere." Some reviewers add that the animation tells you what is coming, since boss transformations telegraph the next attack. A negative review put the gap between look and play as "Stunning art project; rough game." The pushback on the art is practical: a few players say they were too busy dodging to look at it, and some found the foreground scenery got in the way (see the split section on fairness).
The jazz soundtrackHigh
29% of the longer reviews bring up the music: big band, ragtime and barbershop tracks with a separate theme for each boss. Players say they listen to it outside the game, and some name favourite tracks such as Floral Fury and Baking the Wondertart. One reviewer wrote that "the jazz soundtrack somehow makes getting murdered repeatedly feel classy." A few found it repetitive or too loud during long attempts at one boss.
Boss fights you learn by dyingHigh
10% of the longer reviews praise the bosses as unique, creative or memorable, and 12% describe beating them as rewarding or satisfying. Players describe the same loop: die, learn the pattern, get further, win. Fights are short (players put them at two to three minutes) and the retry is instant, so the frustration stays manageable. "You get frustrated at yourself rather than the game, and that's a sign of great design," one review says, and another puts it as "Cuphead doesn't get easier. YOU GET BETTER." Players also like swapping weapons and charms per boss. Dr. Kahl's Robot comes up by name in dozens of reviews, usually as the wall that stopped someone, and Grim Matchstick, King Dice and Cala Maria are the other bosses players keep naming.
The Delicious Last Course expansionHigh
22% of the longer reviews mention the DLC, many of them to tell others to buy it. Players praise its bosses, its art (some think it is even more polished than the base game) and Ms. Chalice, the new playable character with a double jump and dash-parry. "It does not feel like a small extra chapter. It feels like a proper expansion that respects the main game," one review says. The caveats are covered in the split section below: some find it short, some find its fights more chaotic, and some think its items make the base game too easy.
Replay value and completion goalsMedium
17% of the longer reviews talk about Expert mode, S and P ranks, 300% completion or the achievement list. Some players first finished it on Switch, Xbox or PlayStation and bought it again on Steam to do it all a second time. Players describe the achievements as hard but built around mastering the game rather than grinding, though several say S-ranking everything or pacifist runs of the run-and-gun stages pushed them to their limit.
Good value for the priceMedium
13% of the longer reviews call the game worth the money, some saying they would have paid more. One player wrote that "this is a lot of game for the price". A handful disagreed, mostly players who found it too short or too hard to get through.
Runs on almost anythingLow
A small group of reviews notes that the game runs smoothly on old laptops, Macs, Linux, the Steam Deck and the ROG Ally. One reads simply "best game ever works on the worst laptops with 60fps". A few others reported frame drops or a DLC boss crashing on low-end hardware.
Where players are split
Is the difficulty fair, or does luck decide?High
59% of the longer reviews talk about the difficulty, and this is where they divide. Dozens call it hard but fair: "The game is difficult, yes, but almost never feels unfair," as one player put it. 7% of the longer reviews argue the opposite, saying attack orders, platform spawns and minion placements come down to luck and can produce hits you cannot avoid. "Way too much RNG, so getting through a stage is mostly luck," one negative review says, and a positive reviewer wrote that "If the game has a major weakness, it's probably an overreliance on RNG." Cala Maria, Grim Matchstick and the Devil come up by name in these complaints. Other gripes sit alongside it: hitboxes that feel off, a parry that seems to fail at random ("Parrying mechanic is the most inconsistent thing on the planet"), foreground scenery hiding projectiles, and screens so busy that "the visibility issue, this is your true enemy, not the boss." A smaller group says the game is overhyped and not that hard at all, especially for players raised on Contra or Mega Man.
Co-op with a friendMedium
8% of the longer reviews discuss playing with a partner, sibling, child or friend, and the stories are warm: parents playing with kids, couples beating the Devil together. Several co-op players say it is harder than solo. "Me and my wife beat Cuphead in co-op, and honestly it felt much harder than playing solo," one review says. One co-op player found the hit-pause after a parry jarring, because it freezes the game for both players. The lack of online co-op is covered under frustrations.
Ms. Chalice and the expansion's itemsMedium
Players who love the DLC still disagree about how it fits the base game. A group of reviews says Ms. Chalice and new weapons like Crackshot make earlier bosses much easier, with one calling it "a shame that the DLC is Pay to Win in a game about mastery." Others welcome that as a lifeline for struggling players and suggest buying the DLC early for exactly that reason. Some completionists dislike that 100% completion requires the DLC, and a few found its bosses (Saltbaker, Esther Winchester, Glumstone) more chaotic and luck-driven than the base game's.
LengthLow
A small set of reviews calls the game short, with some finishing the base game and DLC in well under ten hours. Others answer that the difficulty and ranking goals stretch it out and that it is "quality over quantity".
What frustrates players
The run-and-gun stagesMedium
Among reviews that judge the six side-scrolling run-and-gun levels, more criticize them than enjoy them. Players call them the weakest part of the game, mostly there to hand out the coins needed for weapons and charms: "coins are mostly found in run and gun levels, which are definitely the weakest part of the game." One negative review called them "the 6 worst levels of anything I have ever played in any game." Funhouse Frazzle and Perilous Piers come up by name, especially from players going for pacifist ranks. A minority enjoys them as a change of pace, and a few even wanted more of them.
Keyboard controls and no mouse supportMedium
PC players who try to play without a controller report the same problems: mouse buttons cannot be bound, some keys (like interact) cannot be changed, firing means holding a button down for the whole fight, and two players cannot both use keyboards. One otherwise glowing review listed the missing mouse support as a gripe: "I had to use external software just to map shoot and dash to left and right click." Another asked for a fire toggle "so I don't have to hold down a button 99% of the time." Several positive reviews simply tell newcomers to use a controller. Most of the negative reviews that raise it were written within the first hour of play.
No online co-op, and Remote Play that lagsMedium
Around three dozen reviews complain that co-op only works on one machine. Players who tried Steam Remote Play Together report input lag, controller assignment trouble or sessions that stopped working. "If this game had real coop it would be a 10/10 coop game but it's only remote/local so ill give it 8.5/10," one player wrote, and another refunded the game after half an hour because of it.
Controller detection and save bugsLow
A handful of reports describe PlayStation controllers not working without third-party tools, a phantom "player 2" joining mid-fight during solo play, a stray keyboard press locking out the controller until restart, and controllers that stopped responding properly in the DLC. Rarer still, a few players lost their save files after a crash or shutdown.
Simple mode does not count toward progressLow
Several players who needed the easier Simple mode were surprised that clearing bosses on it does not open the late game. One review warns that "they won't even let you in the final fight if you didn't beat them all on regular." Others call Simple mode a poor stepping stone because the boss phases differ from Regular.
Missing accessibility optionsLow
A few players could not play comfortably at all: one had no way to tell pink parryable objects apart without a colorblind option, and others found the film grain or flashing effects painful, with no in-game setting to turn them off. Players also asked for brief invincibility after super moves and clearer charm descriptions, and several noted that a couple of items (the smoke dash above all) make most of the others irrelevant.
3. The player conversation
The tone is affectionate and loud. Players wear rage as a badge of honour: reviews joke about broken controllers and keyboards, then score the game 10/10, and several "I hate this game" reviews are thumbs up. Many short reviews are memes or lines from the main menu song, so the substantive discussion comes from a smaller group of longer reviews. Some come from returning players who finished Cuphead years ago on console and bought it again on Steam, a few of whom say news of new Cuphead games from Studio MDHR brought them back.
Players who give up within the first hour or so talk about difficulty and input: no mouse shooting, keyboard binds, no online co-op, and in a few cases visual effects that hurt their eyes. Players stuck midway name specific bosses, with Dr. Kahl's Robot, Grim Matchstick, Wally Warbles and King Dice recurring. Completionists chasing S ranks, Expert mode and P ranks are the ones who talk most about randomness, parry timing, DLC balance and the pain of pacifist run-and-gun runs. The recommendation rate held steady week to week across the slice.
4. What the developers could do
- Make luck-heavy moments more readable and consistent. Reviews that raise randomness point to unavoidable attack combinations in fights like Cala Maria and the Devil, foreground scenery hiding projectiles, and parries that seem to fail.
- Add mouse binding, full key rebinding and a toggle-fire option. Keyboard players, especially those who quit in the first hour, name missing mouse support, locked keys and holding the fire button as the reason they could not get into the game.
- Rework or offer alternatives to the run-and-gun stages. Players call them the weakest part of the game and resent needing them for shop coins, so other ways to earn coins or reworked stages would answer a complaint that even fans repeat.
- Add online co-op or make Remote Play smoother. Around three dozen reviews wanted to play with a friend remotely and found only local co-op and laggy streaming, and at least one player refunded over it.
- Fix controller detection and protect save files. Reports of PlayStation controllers failing, a phantom second player joining solo runs, and lost saves are rare, but they can stop a run or wipe a player's progress.
- Add accessibility settings. A colorblind marker for parryable objects and toggles for film grain and flashing would let the players who stopped for those reasons keep going.
- Let Simple mode lead somewhere. Players who need the easier mode are blocked from the late game, so letting Simple clears count, or making Simple a closer rehearsal of Regular, would keep them playing.
- Rebalance weaker weapons, charms and supers. Completionists say a few items such as the smoke dash and some DLC tools outclass the rest, and ask for brief invincibility after super moves.
